What's New

The Goldstone report, whose release is imminent, will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in person by Goldstone on 29 September 2009, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. (Geneva time). The UN has scheduled an entire 3 hours for discussion of the Goldstone report and the report of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Navi Pillay, also on Gaza – what is in effect another special session devoted to the UN blood libel against the Jewish state. Goldstone's oral presentation will be followed by a "dialogue" with the members of the Council. The proceedings will be webcast.

Back-to-back Goldstone and Pillay report discussions makes sense for the UN. Pillay's 80 paragraph report devotes 66 paragraphs to Israel and 8 paragraphs to Hamas. Her recommendations mention only Israel and never name "Hamas." In fact, she suggests that this antisemitic organization dedicated to genocide against the Jewish people is serious about human rights -"Hamas has also made public statements that it is committed to respect international human rights and humanitarian law."

Behind the scenes states will be negotiating the consequences of the Goldstone report – which will undoubtedly spawn one or more Israel-bashing resolutions. The resolution(s) will in turn undoubtedly call for a "follow-up" report on one or more libelous recommendations, which will lead to more resolutions (and so on and so forth).
The Council has already adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all other 191 UN member states combined.

The Obama administration, which will be seated at the UN Human Council as a member for the first time, will be faced with the real-life world of the UN and "human rights." In the past, Canada would call for the vote on lop-sided anti-Israeli resolutions, while the EU took cover.

Here is the current timetable for the forthcoming Human Rights Council 12th Session:

President Obama's UN debut is fast approaching. But as he looks forward to his makeover as global conciliator and potentate, all the signs point to a train wreck that has the potential of making health-care reform look easy.

Two problems are putting a wrench in his plans: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libyan president Col. Moammar Qaddafi. Both are coming to the UN's New York headquarters in less than two weeks with to-do lists that don't include improving Obama's poll numbers.

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad called the president's bluff. In mid-summer Obama decided that when the UN met in September, he would become the first American president to preside over a session of the Security Council (the council's presidency rotates among its members, and this month is the United States's turn). Before Obama's move, the council's agenda items for September had included "nuclear non-proliferation - Iran" and "nuclear non-proliferation - North Korea." But after inviting heads of state and government to join him, Obama set a new agenda, described by Amb. Susan Rice as "focused on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any specific countries." The Iranian president saw his opportunity, and yesterday he announced that Iran is ready for talks about "worldwide nuclear non-proliferation" and "global nuclear disarmament."

Obama undoubtedly added "disarmament" to his council moment to impress a non-American audience. He didn't care that in UN circles it would be used to change the subject from preventing Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons to disarming Israel and the United States. Fine and dandy with Ahmadinejad.

Furthermore, on Monday the Iranian president said he has no intention of halting uranium enrichment or negotiating over his country's nuclear "rights." With Obama running away from naming specific troublesome countries - at a summit of world leaders, at the Security Council, in the middle of New York City - why shouldn't Ahmadinejad treat Americans as airheads who prefer photo ops too: "Nuclear proliferation - who, me?"

Meanwhile, the Qaddafi problem is getting more "sensitive," as Ambassador Rice has so delicately put it. Obama's idea for a summit meeting, which seemed like a harmless international diversionary tactic in the midst of a domestic mess, has the potential to become an image maker's worst nightmare. Libya is a member of the Security Council, and Qaddafi is looking for a hug (literally). So now Obama's people are worrying about how to avoid him, or at least how to keep the cameras away when Obama embraces a man whom Americans understand to be a human-rights low-life extraordinaire. The irony is that it was Obama himself who issued Qaddafi the invitation to the council summit.

The president may also run into the colonel at the General Assembly podium the day before. On September 23 Obama will assume the dais and wax eloquent about the glories of the United Nations. The fantasy won't last long, though. Libya is the president of this year's General Assembly, resulting in a speaker order that makes Obama into Qaddafi's warm-up act.

The mandate of the UN Human Rights Council's Goldstone Inquiry is this: Israel is the villain and Palestinians and their Hamas government are the victim. The Inquiry, due to report to the UN Human Rights Council on 20 September 2009 in Geneva, is a product of a Council resolution that states:

"Human Rights Council... Decides to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission".

This mandate is from Resolution S-9/1, whose title alone tells the story: "The Grave Violations of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression in the occupied Gaza Strip". It was adopted on 12 January 2009 at the Human Rights Council 9th Special Session. Only Canada voted against this one-sided resolution intended to create yet another layer of UN demonization and discrimination against the state of Israel. The European Union abstained.

Despite Goldstone's claims that he has changed this mandate by informal conversations with unknown UN actors, the Human Rights Council set the mandate of his inquiry by resolution and has never changed it. Goldstone, a lawyer and former judge, knows full well that he has no jurisdiction or authority to change the mandate either alone or in informal conversation with anyone. His claims to the contrary, therefore, are a serious ethical and legal breach both to the critics who have accused him of assuming a position tainted from the outset, and to the Council itself.

His report will shortly be published. At EYEontheUN we have prepared a resource page for those interested in the background to the report, the biased judges participating in the Goldstone Inquiry - who had decided the case before it was heard - and the real facts that will bear no resemblance to the Goldstone outcome.

The UN has just rolled out a new overhauled website. Presumably, the idea was to make it clearer what the UN does and to make it easier to access the goings-on. Insofar as UN demonization of Israel and UN-driven antisemitism are central pillars of its activities, the new site does an admirable job. In only five easy steps, the user is presented with ten categories for all meeting summaries and press releases of the entire General Assembly since they went online in 1995. One such category is "Palestinian Rights." All the other choices list nothing but generalities.

The UN site is accessed by educational institutions, advocates, parliamentarians, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world in six languages. Sooner or later, almost every schoolchild in America is bound to log on to www.un.org. The American taxpayer pays 22% of the cost of building and maintaining the UN website (along with all other regular budget costs). And in only five steps your child too can listen to Iranian President Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust and talk about those Zionists' "ugly faces." (These were his words at the UN Durban II "anti-racism" conference in April, which the UN has chosen to archive and place permanently on its website.)

Here are the directions to the world of UN-driven hatred for the Jewish people:

STEP 1: Go to www.un.org

STEP 2: Click "welcome" and you are greeted with "United Nations - It's your world!" [Well, with a few exceptions]

STEP 3: Here we are at the UN English-language home page, headlined "United Nations: We the peoples.A stronger UN for a better world." [Depending on who you are and where you live, mind you] Now click on "Stories from the UN News Center."

STEP 4: Click on "What, when at the UN."

STEP 5: And here we are at the gateway to everything happening at the UN. Under "At a Glance: Recent Action," you can "browse meeting summaries & press releases" by just choosing "select body and date." What body and date, you ask? A handy drop-down menu makes it very easy to understand the programs and priorities for anyone who isn't quite sure what the UN does. There are ten choices: "All venues, General Assembly President, 1st Committee (Disarmament), 2nd Committee (Economic & Social), 3rd Committee (Social, Humanitarian), 4th Committee (Special Political), 5th Committee (Administrative & Budgetary), 6th Committee (Legal), Palestinian Rights, and Committee on Information."

Of course, one thing that can be said in favor of the latest UN outrage is that it makes the double-standards applied to Israel even more obvious. The UN undoubtedly needed to expand the index because the mammoth number of resolutions, documents, press releases, meetings and conferences devoted to condemning Israel had become so large that the hatemongers needed assistance organizing all their Israel-bashing campaign material.

The amount of UN webspace dedicated only to Palestinian claims - including pre-Israel maps - is huge. There is the "United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine" or UNISPAL, and the anti-Israel non-governmental organization networking scheme called the "NGO network on the Question of Palestine." Added to that is the constant material churned out by the only UN Division focused on a single people - the UN Division on Palestinian Rights. And then there is the UN Human Rights Council, which President Obama has now embraced. It has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all other 191 UN states combined. Along with fellow human rights enthusiasts China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, American representatives will be taking their place as new Council members in just one week time.

Way back in the pre-internet days of 1945, the UN Charter proclaimed the "equality of nations large and small." Modernity for the UN has brought an end to such lofty commitments.